The feed drive of a machine tool plays a very important role when the machine tool is executing a machining process; the performance of the feed drive will directly influence the time of the machine tool executing the machining process, the quality of the surface of the workpiece and the service life of the machine tool.
Currently, if a designer wants to provide a customized machine tool for a customer in order to execute a machining process for a specific workpiece, the designer will usually assume a machining situation for the machining process of the specific workpiece, and then estimate the load conditions needed by all components of the feed drive of the machine tool according to the assumed machining situation. Next, the designer can determine the design conditions and design target of the machine tool. Afterward, the designer will select each of the components of the feed drive of the machine tool, such as screw, motor and bearing, etc., to provide a component combination. And then calculate whether the component combination can satisfy the design target under the design conditions in order to obtain a best component combination. However, the assumed machining situation may not completely conform to the machining process of the specific workpiece; accordingly, the customized machine tool designed according to the assumed machining situation may not satisfy the requirements of the customer.
On the other hand, in order to make the customized machine tool more general-purpose, the designer may design the machine tool for the customer according to various machining situations. However, as the machine tool is designed to be general-purpose, the performance of some components of the machine tool may be too high or too low because the customer only needs to process a specific workpiece, which may increase the cost of the machine tool or influence the performance and the service life of the machine tool.
The customer may already provide his/her requirements for the designer before the designer designs the customized machine tool for the customer. However, the customer may only roughly describe his requirements instead of providing quantization design parameters. Thus, the customized machine tool designed by the designer must not completely conform to the actual requirements of the customer.